While shooting Hard Candy, did you expect this huge amount of succes it earned in the USA?

David Slade

Not really - we were doing the best film we could - success wasn't on our radar at that point - the schedule was all encompassing as we had only 18 and a half days to shoot in so we were all just driving towards making the best and most uncompromising film we could.

We were all shocked when the film recieved such notariety - I think its a situation where by not compromising and being in a position to sell out people responded by buying in.

Did you have problems finding a studio for a movie dealing with a controversial topic like this?

David Slade

Not at all - in fact there was a bidding war at Sundance with a large number of studios from smaller independents like Lionsgate who bought the film in the end to some very large studios vying to distribute. It started straight after the Sundance premiere curtain closed with people shouting offers from car windows at us as we walked up the hill and went on all night - it was quite bizzarre.

With Ellen Page you found a talented young actress for the character of Hayley. Did you face problems when offering this role to her and other young actresses?

David Slade

No problems at all - Ellen was extremely passionate about the film and really threw her heart and soul into the shooting and rehearsals. We were blessed to have her and I am continually grateful that she took the role.

In casting, being a humanist despite the content of the film, it was important for me to cast someone not just as an excellent actor but also knowing that they were mature enough to not be scarred by the film. Ellen was 17 when we shot and clearly mature enough to handle much worse.

Hard Candy offers different perspectives of evil. The audience never really knows whether to judge for Haley or Jeff. Which one would you chose?

David Slade

Well in the paradigm of our film morality is almost accidental - the importance lies in responsibility, taking charge of the things you have done and standing up to the weight of them, acting responsibly, not in a social moral sense, but in the sense of a human being that interacts with others, it is a question that is both existential and pragmatic.

In the end the question is not who would you choose but what does the antagonism of morality make you feel about the your pre conceived notions about the kind of characters these actors are playing. I would hope that who you choose would either make you think harder about your views when the film is over or antagonise you.

Did Patrick Wilson have any difficulties to identify himself with the role of Jeff?

David Slade

Patrick wanted to play Jeff as honestly as possible, not to make him like-able or to sway the argument in the character's favour - but to fuel the fire of the polemic the film incites.

While he as a human being found some of the material difficult - he was always clear about his intentions and like Ellen we were blessed to have him.

In Hard Candy it seems that pedophilia is a predominantely male habit. A fact that certainly turns out to be true. Where do you think are the differences in reception of the movie considering men and women?

David Slade

Well as a man I am only qualified to report what I have seen.

The colours in the movie play an important role on mood and tone. Did you think about this stylistic device from the very beginning on?

David Slade

I had this planned out along with a number of the sequences from a year before the film was shot, however I did not know how far I could push this as a subliminal device until I was in rehearsal seeing the most amazing performances - by this I mean that the more solid the performances in the film the less you "see" the stylistic form and the more it impacts, as you tend to 'feel' it instead of 'seeing' it as you are distracted by the acting - at least that is my hypothesis.....

What do you think about the importance of dubbing movies in the respective foreign countries? The German voice of Hayley in Hard Candy, for example, doesn't fit her at all.

David Slade

Dubbing is a financial device - it has no place in the creative realm - a despise it - however film is a bastard child of art and commerce....

Let's talk about your upcoming project 30 Days of Night: based on a comic, will you rather lean on classical methods of movie making or can we expect a whole new stylistic experience, comparable to Robert Rodriguez' Sin City?

David Slade

We are setting out not to make a comic book film, but a horror film with a degree of realism, a genuinely scary vampire film as oppose to a fantasy film, the category most vampire films fall into.

I love the graphic novel and we are staying as faithful to it as we can within the paradigm of not falling into fantasy, We are also hoping to use some material from the opening scenes of a screenplay that Steve Niles (the writer of 30 Days Of Night Grapic Novel) wrote before he started work on idea in graphic novel form.

Who can we expect to be the equal counterpart on Josh Hartnett in 30 Days of Night?

Any ideas email me......

If you were forced to express your new movie 30 Days of Night by notes and not by images, which Bands' sound would you chose?

David Slade

Nick Cave, Select songs by Leonard Cohen, Pendereki, Verdi, Diamanda Galas, Shostakovich - it is not a Rock and Roll movie - hopefully a more classic and timeless piece.

"The Mercy Seat" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - it made me laugh while I wanted to cry and made me think about the paradoxes of life.

If you weren't a filmmaker, you'd:

Be dead.

Person you'd love to date:

My Girlfriend Erica there is no one else.

The monster that scared you the most when you were a child:

HR Giger and Ridley Scott's Alien.

The movie you'd desperately want to see right now in this moment: ANYTHING by Nic Roeg from the seventies and I am looking forward to Herzog's latest "Wild Blue Yonder" and Michelle Gondry's "The Science of Sleep"

I'd recommend the users of www.BlairWitch.de to...:

Get angry not passive, be healthy, at least in body if the mind is not possible, and if the body is not possible at least be balanced in the mind even if abject, go back to assassinating pop stars like they did in the 60s, we need it now more than ever, follow your own dreams and don't buy into other people's, stand by your ideas, consider nihilism as a philosophy for life, maybe budhism I hear or solipsism oh and er...be good..don't take drugs drink or smoke too much, be safe and eat more fruit.